Discussion (23) ¬

Yeah, not to question Rikk’s decision, but Jesse doesn’t seem rehabilitated to me. Marc’s quip made wonder: Was Jesse indoctrinated into blindly worshiping Maximillianna or did he chose to follow her by his own volition? (fanatical devotion like Jesse’s is hard to come by, but Tim the fanboy showed us that it’s not impossible to find willing lackeys).

And I don’t think you need to much indoctrination to admire Maximillianna. She really was just strait better than other people, and really was a perfect leader. Its not like one of those cults were the leader is pretending to be what they are not. Maximillianna ended all war; what more could you want?
Sure, she went a little crazy, but that does not mean she was not someone truly worthy of admiration.

If Mark’s the betrayer, this is the first time that I would have guessed it. And yet, it makes sense in a lot of ways… Marcland probably had more of a lasting effect on his self-esteem and self-confidence than any of us would have thought. Particularly with Bax and Di sort of pairing off. Not only that, Hilda’s attraction to Marc could result in overlooking him, and this whole thing with Rumy and Will being suspected traitors could result in him getting even less attention, and feeling even more out of the loop and unimportant. Future Shanna’s involvement with him could cause her to keep the details hidden, and if he’s the betrayer then that would explain his despondent attitude… All that’s left is Di’s favorite movie. Anyone have any ideas there?

In the future, Marc “lost something on the bad day” and was the only surviving member of AEGIS who refused to continue to fight.

That struck me as odd since he doesn’t seem to value anything material, nor any other individual people; he values heroism, enjoying life, and himself. He is unbelievably resilient and can even thrive in Marcland. What does he have to lose?

Either he was brain damaged in the future, or he was the traitor and he felt so horrible about it that he gave up on everything he believed in.

On the other hand, I actually have no problem putting Jesse to work doing what he believes in. His motivations are clear, and thus his actions will be predicatable. What is he going to do, sabotage the effort to clone the general? Hell no. Especially not after Will “accidentally” allowed him to learn that the cloning project will be successful and will result in creating someone who will lead the human resistance.

You know, if he clones the general who then grows into a tyrant who then goes to the past to get killed, to leave a bit of DNA behind to be used for cloning, which becomes the new general who grows into a tyrant…

… eventually in one of those worlds (since every time this loop happens, it creates a new reality), the DNA will be so degraded that the general will be, medically speaking, retarded.

Wouldn’t it be awkward to discover that the current plot line is where this DNA sample is not so fresh?

I don’t think letting Rikk/Will/Rumi die would traumatize Marc enough to put him out of commission for years. I don’t think he’d imagine it was all his fault if there were a real honest-to-god traitor whose fault it *actually was*, nor if the Hand of Justice were still out there ready to be made to pay. I mean, it’s possible, but he strikes me as a lot more resilient than that. I think he would want to kick someone’s ass.

But I don’t actually think the traitor is Marc either. I actually think he was brain damaged in the future, or else something else happened that I haven’t thought of.

The fact is that unless I’m seriously misreading something earlier in the story, I know exactly who the traitor is, with enough confidence that I would feel bad saying it out loud to people who are still trying to guess. Sorry.

Hmm, one other thing I just noticed. Clones is plural in this comic. I intitially brushed it off as just redundancy for the sake of failsafing – producing a litter of generals and hoping one survives – but maybe they are cloning multiple different people?

The General he is cloning is the one who has come back now but isn’t the one who provided the sample. The first General lived many thousands of years in the future, the clone is seperate from the time sequence that involves getting her DNA.

He is really creating a MkII version of her so that Aegis can cheat and get the benefit of humanity’s ‘greatest’ warrior early, just like they cheat by importing future tech and research into the present.